Sir, - After reading the latest reviews of a new study of the relationship between the great American writers Ernest Hemingway and Scott Fitzgerald, by Scott Donaldson, I decided I couldn't wait for the obligatory book tokens on Father's Day. I had to have this book now.
Salivating with anticipation, I took myself off to Dublin's literary quarter to purchase said study. Imagine my chagrin, nay horror, that none of the bookshops I visited - Waterstones in Dawson Street, The Dublin Bookshop in Grafton Street nor Hughes in the Green Shopping Centre, had the book in stock. What all three bookshops did have in stock, by the hundreds it seemed (indeed The Dublin Bookshop devoted its entire window to it), was a cookery book by a new cooking sensation, Oliver Hardy or whoever.
What on earth is going on?
Are Dublin bookshops dumbing down? Will literary walks now include stainless steel kitchens where drooling idiots once licked their fingers while composing new recipes for tripe? - Yours, etc.,
Eddie Naughton, Weaver's Street, The Coombe, Dublin 8.